


hold me down a little longer

by Jupiter2012



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Breaking Bucky, Just a little breaking bad pun for you there, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Self-Hatred, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 04:57:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15259905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jupiter2012/pseuds/Jupiter2012
Summary: “Halfa’ yer soul and all that, ain’t it.”





	hold me down a little longer

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Thirteen Letters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2689091) by [dropdeaddream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dropdeaddream/pseuds/dropdeaddream), [WhatAreFears](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatAreFears/pseuds/WhatAreFears). 



> Please mind the tags/warnings!

_It’s stupid_ , Bucky thinks, listening to the boys laugh and poke jokes at the skinny, rough looking man who’s joined them at the bar tonight. _Taboo_ and _unnatural_ , mama would say if she were here. Then she’d scowl and whack Steve and him both on the arms with her great wooden rolling pin for listening. Bucky’s neck rolls around so he can look at Steve, tucked into the corner of the bench. Steve’s eyes are wide as saucers as he nods in acknowledgment of John’s storytelling.

“You really believe this fairytale stuff, Steve?” Bucky asks. His voice slurs and he hiccups and clamps a hand on Steve’s shoulder. His palm fits over the whole bone, easy.

“Shut up Buck- ‘course I do. My ma had one, didn’t she?” Steve snaps at him. He’s not taking his face off John. Bucky shuts up because it’s true, though he’s still slightly amused by Steve’s concentration. Bucky’d only ever seen it up close once or twice, but there had been two words, written in her own handwriting or something that closely resembled it. The edge of her shirts had never fully covered it on her pale neck; whenshe reached her arms out too far, there it was peeking out. Bucky always looked away quick. Something about it screamed _private_ , too private to look at, even for a fairytale, and not his right to see if the name written on her neck matched the one of the man she lost in the war.

Then Johnny leans forward onto the bar, pulling down the back of his grey homespun with a showman’s flourish. His bones creak as he moves. The grubby group crank their necks, zeroing in on the back of John’s neck. Bright, smooth lines of white writing trace out a curving handwriting. _Sally Morrison._  

“Wow,” Steve breathes out beside him, staring. “Look at it, Buck.”

Bucky squints. It looks like Steve’s ma’s did, but it isn’t writing like he thought before, not ink, it’s scar tissue. Lines of impossibly bright white flesh, a hair’s width or maybe less; the turn of the letters impossible with a knife or needle.

“Met her in second grade. Knew it right away, even though I’d never even heard of the thing before that.” Johnny creaks soulfully. Bucky takes another swig of beer as old John sits up. It tastes like piss, but it’s also cheap and he’s been missing the buzz for weeks. It’s the first night they’ve been out in a while, what with Steve being too damn sick to walk into town for a month. A half year since Sarah Rogers died and Steve seems determined to snuff out the same way, always rattling somewhere deep in his chest and making Bucky’s heart jump into his mouth when it’s too quiet. But today, Steve had insisted he was fit as a fiddle and then Bucky had insisted they go out for a drink or two and then Steve was too stubborn to protest, and Bucky was okay with using that today.

“Your ma and tonight are the only two times I’ve ever heard of the thing,” Bucky says, trying to continue the conversation but his mind doesn’t follow. His stomach is twisting uncomfortably in his gut, been doing that for weeks. There are two pink patches high on Steve’s cheeks. 

“I guess it don’t make too much of a difference. World’s awfully big anyway. Folks get along well enough without one. There’s plenty of dames for you, Bucky, don’t you worry,” Steve says, eyebrows raised over his glass.

“And then we went swimming down in the river one day when I was eight years old, and my sister Annie, god rest her soul, screamed at me that I had a name on my neck. When I realized it, it’d appeared, just like that. I was so surprised I nearly-“ There’s a ruckus behind them that cuts John off, one of the men smashing a bottle over someone else’s head. Bucky doesn’t bother turning around, but it’s enough to make Steve stand up, wobbly and determined. So Bucky gets up too. He tangles his hand in Steve’s collar and tugs him back down hard, snarling. The man’s three times the size of Steve, a real rough kind, and this sure as hell is not going to happen today when he actually dragged Steve out here for a reason. He’s too drunk to carry them both home, he doesn’t want to. The bottle-smashing party looks over at them mockingly. Steve glares at Bucky, gives him a once-over that makes Bucky feel like he’s been flayed alive.

“Now you listen to me, you asshole,” Bucky breathes, jabbing his finger into Steve’s chest, because for some reason he’s angry too now, so pissed and drunk he can’t think coherently.His chest hurts with the pressure.

“You-you just-“ And he breaks off, jaw clenching up. 

“You alright, Buck?” Steve says, very gently, and he’s still furious but of course he knows there’s something going on, Steve always knows it all.

He’s not alright, but it’s only right now that Bucky really thinks about it, wonders how long Steve will last when Bucky leaves. He’s too small, is all. Small and sick too often, and if he’d had better medical treatment growing up and not been bedridden half the time, maybe the outside would’ve grown and matched the inside.

The draft letter is heavy in his pocket, resealed as if that could stop its contents from escaping and swallowing him whole. There’s the kind of tension that they’ve all felt since people started dropping dead like flies from the sick, or lack of food, and with the war just beginning now it’s too much these days for anyone to hope they’ll grow old. And- Steve doesn’t give a damn about his own health if there’s anything mildly interesting to him within a mile. His lungs wheeze in the cold when the air is too dry, or if there’s dust from the cracking ceiling, or when it’s fuckin’ spring, but he denies it furiously, pretends like he doesn’t double up every time he walks up a flight of stairs even when Bucky ends up half-carrying him through the door anyway, and Bucky’s still terrified he’ll come over one day and find Steve lying like a statue with blood on his lips like his ma, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he has to watch Steve die the same way.

Steve’s staring at him with that _look_ , the one that he wears while he listens to terrible news, full of some otherworldly patience. The silence before an explosion; he’s expecting it. So it hits him hard, suddenly Bucky doesn’t think he can follow the plan, pull out the letter and let Steve read it and watch his lips thin in that way he does when he sets his mind to something stupid. Because Bucky _knows_ \- he knows. He’d try to enlist for god’s sake, but maybe- maybe staying here in Brooklyn, he’d get a few more years. Bucky- they’re both already hammered- shrugs Steve off like it’s nothing and Steve frowns and _allows_ it if only just for now; another little miracle. So of course he just sits there and orders another round for them both with what little money he has for spending, he’s going to drink until he forgets a little, until he can’t see straight, and it’s so rare that Steve’s here with him, maybe someone’ll have to come and drag them both home. _I’m not going to die_ , he wants to tell Steve, because Steve will find out about it anyway- always does, but his fingers are fumbling, and it’s so easy now to close his eyes and there’s nothing left anyway.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t question his orders. Steve would’ve, but he doesn’t, because Steve’s crazy and he’s only here fighting because someone told him to in the first place, no flowers laid over that and no glory in it, not for him. He wonders if Steve would say something now, in a trench in the middle of Ukraine, freezing cold and soaking in the rain and mud, the smell of blood and rotting bodies seeping into his throat so deep he can taste it. The smoke is stifling; he crouches low to avoid breathing in too much, even though it’s just from the explosions, nothing worse in there- thank god for small mercies.

The first blast was deafening, so loud he almost passed out from it booming into his bones, and by the second he couldn’t hear a thing, and after the third he couldn’t see through the haze of pain and the dust, the dust. Bucky moves through the trench like a crab, jerking and shaking, he’s going to fall over any second. Trying to listen for- and knowing full well he won’t be able to hear the shout of German voices approaching, the blast of a rifle. There are bits of flesh over here, a whole finger over there, scattered around delicately, and Bucky wiggles his own fingers and toes a little bit to check they’re still there, all twenty.

And then as he turns into a smaller, shallow clearing in the walls- someone’d dug it out in a hurry- he sees a man. Or part of one, with both legs completely blown off and head smashed in, bit of brain goo visible. He’s sitting in a pool of blood, blinking up at Bucky, dazed. No, saying something. I can’t hear you, he tries to say, but his throat is so dry it hurts and all that comes out is a gasp. It turns out it doesn’t matter anyway, because Bucky knows what the man’s trying to say. Fingers numb and frozen, he grabs for his rifle strap but it isn’t on his shoulder, must’ve dropped it, why’d you drop it, Barnes? He’s sweating cold as he looks around, and the man moves his fingers a little, just a brush but it must have taken him everything to do it. Pointing. Strapped high on his own belt, there’s a sleek little German sidearm, a souvenir from some other battle. Bucky’s hands are caked in blood and dirt, but he reaches over far, pulls it from its holster and shoots point blank, then drops the gun like it’s burned him, and off-record it’s his first kill and first time disobeying orders all in one, because his commanding officer had once told them specifically to wait for a medic in every scenario- no matter what, he’d said, because men lost their arms and legs and still came back from the war- until Bucky’d thought about it later and realized that’d been his commanding officer that he shot. Half a day later, there hadn’t even been a body left intact for miles.

 

* * *

 

It’s after a special op that he hears about it again, soulmates, Jones calls it. That night in the tent brings him right back to the bar with Steve and old John, the last time they’d been out together before Bucky left for basic training, seems like a million years ago now. He’s on the four-man team Philips fried up because he’s a good shot in camp, the best maybe, and he’s survived the front once to boot. Their target was just past Parakop behind the lines, the home of a military general that was supposed to have crucial information, paperwork. The other three soldiers- all from different units- crept in under the cover of night, and Bucky stayed back in the tree line, the sniper held loosely, reverently. There were minimal security measures around the property; it understandable in an area that was not yet used to the threat of invasion or the truth of war, but it was still laughable: “Jesus, ain’t this guy supposed to be a _general_ \- we ain’t that far from the front and we’ve been pushin’ like hell for days.”

They clap Bucky on the back afterwards, good work, Barnes. He’s good if this is his first time. This your first time on an op, man? He’s _excellent_.

And when they mutter amongst themselves in their filthy tent afterwards, pitched low in a cornfield, it’s congratulatory, because they made it this far and nobody wants to think too much about how carefully they’ll have to sneak back through no man’s land to get back to camp.

 _Soulmates_ , Jones says later in the early morning, and he says it with the same kind of reverence Steve’s ma would use talking about the Lord. It seems like it’s a kind of supernatural to Jones: “When you realize you love a gal, you know, when she’s it, if she’s yer soulmate, her name’ll appear on your skin,” Jones says fanatically. Talks just like John did, Bucky thinks. “Halfa’ yer soul and all that, ain’t it.”

“Then where the hell is yours, Gabe?” Jimmy asks, and then laughs and shakes his head when Jones tells him in all seriousness that he’s waiting on it. “Seems like a horse load of crap to me, son,” but the mood is light; they’re all in better spirits now than they were before the op.The other soldier, and Bucky’s never learned his name because he said it too fast so they just call him Hal instead, says something in French to Jones. As he talks, he gestures animatedly, excited. Then the man pulls down the collar of his canvas jacket a bit and then his shirt inside to show them a name written on his collarbone in thin white lines, gleaming in the low light.

They lay low until dusk, lying in the grass, but no troops even come close to their hiding spot, and they sneak through enemy territory as smoothly as a hot knife through butter. When Bucky finally lies down on a lumpy bedroll in camp three days later, too exhausted to speak- he sleeps with the blood of five German men on his hands.

 

* * *

 

He does it again six weeks later, this time a group of well-known officials closer into the city, and by the time winter really hits them, he’s made records with his shooting (twenty hundred yards, more, _a bit more_ ).

And then he does it again on the front lines with the 107th infantry after that, stabs a man in the eye with his combat knife and just keeps running, shaking the blood off the blade. Hits three headshots within five seconds through a small gap in enemy sandbags, all the way from the opposite fucking trench. Their heads explode like watermelon- kevlar helmets unable to withstand anything more than the standard 5.56.

And then once- once when his kill count’s still in the lower end of the double digits, there’s this Nazi kid, has to be a kid, charging at him out of nowhere. He’s small, bony even. Blonde hair, giant blue eyes. Pale. Sharp nose. Crooked, someone’d set it wrong. It goes on and on in his head, it won’t _stop_. Bucky stares at him, heart in his mouth, muscles locking up.The kid doesn’t even have a gun. Who let him into a fight without a fucking gun? Pick one up, there’s plenty over there.

Pick one up. Run.

“Where’s your gun, kid,” Bucky asks, enunciates it and says it slowly as if that would somehow make the other understand the English. The soldier, wild and desperate-looking, doesn’t answer, doesn’t stop. He’s breathing too fast, little bird chest going in and out.

“Run,” Bucky tells him quietly. His voice cracks. Get away from me, _run_.

The soldier pulls out a knife and swings. Bucky’s hand jerks up and he shoots him directly between the eyes. It’s pure reflex and muscle memory-for a moment he doesn’t even realize he’s the one that fired, until he does. The body falls. _Thump_. It makes him throw up his guts for two days straight, can’t even hold down water. 

And then again. And again, and again. The weeks at the front start blurring together, and the smell of blood isn’t so bad anymore, he’s used to it. It’s more of a musk really, the scent of life, of living. He doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t know what he wants most of the time. Does he want to die lying here in the shit? Unknown. So get up and force your way out, god damn. He pulls himself to his feet and his hands shake and they don’t stop shaking the next day or the next.

Most of all, he want to be home, wants to be warm again. He sends a letter to Steve the first chance he gets, half apology and half reassurance, he wants to hear that Steve’s okay. Becca said she’d tell him if anything happened, but he never writes her. She doesn’t deserve him for a brother, and she’ll be alright with the family, safe. Suddenly, he needs to read it in Steve’s writing that he’s fine, and if he doesn’t get a reply back he’s going to be half-dead, he’ll turn into something awful if Steve Rogers leaves him alone in the world, he knows it now: Steve was the only redeeming part of him. Because Bucky was good at a lot of things before the war: sports, science, girls. But now? Now, he’s good at shooting, better at it than anything else he’s ever done- he’s a killer, maybe that’s the only word for it. It’s what he’s been all along. His hands shake now when he holds them out, but wrapped around a gun, soothed by the cool metal and the familiarity of grip, they are steady. He waits for hours hunched in the hollow chamber that is his head, listening to echoes from his past bounce and shatter. He waits, because it’s always either silence or chaos, no in-betweens, and he thinks he’s finally found that unnatural patience Steve used to have all those months ago, cool and assessing. He kills, and he kills, and he’s _excellent_ , just like Jones said a year ago. _He’s one of the best._

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, while he’s cleaning his gun or picking the shrapnel from under his skin, when waiting in that transparent place between focus and daydreaming, he wonders if he has a soulmate. He doesn’t know if they’re real for sure, but it doesn’t stop him from fantasizing a little. They do it all the time, him and Gabe and Dum Dum. Fantasy is a part of war. It’s the thing that brings them in, the soldiers, and then later it’s the thing that makes them rally to survive. It’s a fucking lie is what it is. Maybe some men do fight for their families, or for God, but all he’s seen so far is death. They are all of them fighting to die: if not to die here on the battlefield in the blood and guts, then to die peaceful and old, but they’ll all fucking die in the end anyway. So Bucky wonders if he should pretend to want something for after this is all over, if he survives the war (he won’t). If there would be someone who would choose him over everything else, something to call _his_ for once. He’s a selfish man down to his bones, Bucky thinks.

Would he look for them? He pictures a girl, she’d be...yes, she’d be blonde, like Steve, maybe. Maybe that shade, golden. Delicate, but with fire. Her name etched on his neck. She didn’t much have to be pretty, not like the gals he’d used to want, but he wouldn’t be able to stand someone boring.

He dreams about it. But when he wakes, he realizes that he’d only deserve someone as horrible as himself. Someone who’s done things like he’s done, killed people in their sleep, taking a damn piss, killed a fucking kid once- didn’t flinch. The pride of the shot doesn’t diminish, it never has, but there’s something else growing in there, something dark. He’s scared of that thing. He wants someone to save him, maybe, but this is war.

He looks at himself and hates what he sees, this shadow of James Barnes, and maybe even Steve would choose to recognize him for what he was and then he’d really have no one. The bombs drop on both sides for hours, rattling teeth; it’s not a good night for anyone.

Letters come back eventually and he doesn’t get anything from Steve, but he doesn’t get anything from Becca either, so Steve has to be alright, they both have to be, or the other would’ve told him. They would’ve told him, or he’d get his letter sent back with a stamp on it, like he did when he’d sent a letter to his aunt and her husband in Texas so many years ago, and it turns out they’d all died in a fire so massive it’d taken the whole farm. Right. _Right?_

The next thing he knows, they’re pushing the line in Azzano, and then the tanks come. And then-

 

* * *

 

He’s dreaming, because Steve’s here, but he’d never dream up Steve so _big_ , and then-

Then they’re walking back to camp like they’ve been on a damn road trip, Steve by his side _too tall_ and _too strong_ , larger than life. Cold sweat is dripping down Bucky’s back, making his palms sticky with it, and all he’s felt this whole damn war was the push of bodies around him, feels it now too, choking him with their closeness.

It’d taken him less than a minute. Less than a minute after he’d himself convinced Steve wasn’t some kind of hallucination or spirit to ask him: did it hurt? Because he has an idea, oh- yes, after the needles and the fire and ice and _death_ in his own veins, he has an idea of what they did to Steve and there ain’t one thing right about it, there ain’t. No. Did Steve even have a choice? Or did they-did they strap him down, too skinny to fight them back. Did they cut his skin? Did it hurt? Steve is too careful with him as they walk back- treats him like he’s going to fall over in the wind. Maybe he is. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

They made him into the face of America. Or at least, the face of the Americans back home. Here in the bullet-strewn fields, Bucky isn’t sure if any of them really have a country. It’s like a riddle: Whaddaya get when you take one Steve Rogers, who couldn’t take a stroll around the damn block without making enemies, and plop him down in the middle of a war with an extra hundred-fifty pounds of muscle and a shield? Whatcha get?

Bucky sits next to Steve in the white noise of the bar, and Steve had blown that entire fucking compound to high hell, and for a second he’s so happy he could really cry right there. He can’t stop _looking_ at Steve, beautiful and golden in the lamps, and someone’d told him he could go home because he’d been tortured. He’d just have to go and ask. But home is here, right by Steve’s side. Didn’t they get that?

Jesus Christ that fucker is big now, towering right over him. Strong enough, Bucky knows it- unnaturally strong, inside and out now. And it’s only now that those other poor shmucks see it, never gave a rat’s ass about Steve when he was a ninety-pound asthmatic, but now they’re all over _Captain America_ like it ain’t even the same person, but it _fucking is_. It makes him a little angry, he’d say, and it’s funny because really, it makes him furious, all of it does.

And then when Steve asks him if he’s ready to fight by his side, voice hopeful, it turns out there isn’t really a choice after all, because Steve’s still the realest thing he’s ever felt. He grabs Steve’s shoulder and shakes him, rough with it, and Steve gives him an assessing sort of gaze, piercing him all the way down.  

“What are you gonna do when this is all over, huh Stevie?” He asks. He’s surprised to hear that his voice sounds too hollow, like he’s speaking through a tunnel and Steve’s on the other end a long, long ways away.

“I really don’t know,” Steve says, smiling at him, amused. Bucky doesn’t smile back. He wants an answer. Use your imagination, Steve. 

After an awkward pause: “Go back to Brooklyn maybe, get our old place back. What about that, pal?” Steve asks, scrunching his forehead up like he’s really thinking about it.

 _No_ , Bucky thinks, _not Brooklyn_.

He’s accepted the fact that he’s going to die one of these days, if he can die. If they didn’t fuck with his guts and muscles and brain too much to retract that last small mercy, he’s going to die in this fucking war, no other possibilities. Steve’ll be okay when it happens, because he’s not so little anymore, and he’s got a girl in a red dress, _absolute stunner that Agent Carter_ , so serious about it she won’t even look at Bucky- isn’t that just something else. These things are true; Bucky witnessed _Captain America_ bend a tank canon with his bare hands, and he _is_ sweet on Carter. He wonders if she’s got Steve’s name on her body somewhere; Steve can’t get enough of her.

He’ll even be glad when he dies if it’s while watching Steve’s back. It seems right, like he’d be in his place. If it’s so Steve can _live_ , survive it all and settle down with Carter somewhere warm maybe, then yes. Hell, maybe they’d even have kids, little Steves and Carters running around and blowing things up. 

He’s been silent for too long and Steve is shaking him gently; he’s stood up, knocked his chair over and hadn’t even noticed it but nobody is really noticing in the bustle of the bar apart from Steve. He should leave, but Steve’s closed his hand around his wrist.

“Bucky,” Steve says, looking at him a little desperately. Steve’s hand tightens around his bone so much it hurts, he’s not really aware of his own strength yet. “Bucky, talk to me. You gotta tell me about it, pal. This isn’t healthy,” Steve says. What had he noticed? Bucky’s hands are shaking- why don’t they ever stop shaking-

“I need a smoke. Don’t follow me,” is what he snaps, and he gets the hell out of there.

Bucky shoves his last precious cigarette between his lips and breathes in deep, holds it for a long minute. The skin around his wrist where Steve grabbed is discoloured in the poor lighting, irritated. And then, when he looks at it _again_ \- closer- 

He puts out his smoke abruptly, grinds it hard into the dirt with the heel of his boot. Then he makes his way back around the bar, falls against the concrete wall, and starts laughing, hysterical. He laughs and laughs, laughs until he’s crying uncontrollably into the fucking ground, until the knife he can’t sleep without is pressed to his wrist, flush against _Steven Grant Rogers_ , and he deserves a lot of terrible, cruel things, but he doesn’t deserve this.

He’s gasping for air, his legs have gone to jelly and he’s scared at the intensity of it, the way he can’t stop sobbing, loud and heavy. Fucking hell, had he always been so eager to take those bright things that didn’t belong to him? It’s not _right_. It’s God’s joke, some great, hilarious tragedy to make him realize, after _all of this_ , that he’d had everything he ever needed back in 19-fucking-38. And now? He shouldn’t even be allowed to touch Steve.

And Steve wouldn’t want him. Steve wouldn’t want him as a soulmate, but he also wouldn’t give up on him, which is undoubtedly the worst part. He’d drag Bucky home, all stubborn, and wouldn’t realize all he’d be holding is a pile of bones, poisonous and eating away at his hands.

It’s finally surfaced- the monster Bucky’s been waiting for since that first shell hit years ago. It comes to him in a blinding flash of a moment, a realization that makes him drop the knife and leaves him clawing at his face, his neck: No matter how tainted- how filthy with blood his hands are now, no matter how much it makes him tremble to stab in deep and twist, he’ll do it a thousand- a million- times over if it’s for Steve. He’d do it without even blinking an eye, just reach in warm, messy gut and _rip_. It’s insanity, nothing more to be said. He’s fucking cracked.

When he calms down enough to breathe somewhat normally and uncurl a little, there’s a pair of army boots standing next to his outstretched arm. Gabe’s looking down at him and _fucking hell_ , has he watched the whole thing? He’d fight back but he realizes, as Gabe crouches down and wrestles his wrist from his body, that he’s in no shape for it, it’s too much, he wants to lie down forever. Gabe stares at the name for a long minute, then says, “Goddamn it, Barnes. Goddamn,” and pokes him hard. “Get up.”

Bucky considers just killing him right there. “Ain’t doing anything by glaring at me like that, Barnes. I already seen it. No use regretting it now, and I won’t be telling anybody.” Gabe mutters at him, reading his face.

Gabe pulls him up with a huff, and Bucky makes him swear secrecy on God, on his wife, and on his children, because Bucky’s never been this terrified in his life. He says “ take it to the grave,” and he means it, and the unspoken threat inside that: _talk and I’ll try my best to kill you_. Maybe Gabe can see through that though, because he just brushes the dust off Bucky’s clothes in a placating sort of way and tells him he’d be an idiot to try and cut it off, and Bucky remembers that Gabe was part of the group that watched him volunteer in their place at Azzano.

It goes like this: the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, he fights, because he’s going to follow Steve til his bones rub themselves raw from it and after that just keep going until the world collapses.

It goes like this: Sometimes, in those rare moments he’s alone, or he thinks _it’s really the fuckin’ end now_ , he pulls down his left sleeve and looks at it, a little wondrously, Steve’s name in Bucky’s own handwriting, scar-white on olive skin.

And fuck, there’d been something in Gabe’s tone that reminded Bucky of something _else_. He’s never had a problem with homos, but it’s _illegal_ , and that’s what it is, isn’t it? They’d- they’d strap him down, pump him full of medicine and chemicals and other shit, he’d heard it from the boys at the docks before, that was what they did. He shakes his sleeve down, covering it, clenches his fists too-tight. Nobody’s ever gunna put him on a fucking table again, _never_.

And then-

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! I’m new here, and probably a few years too late hehe. Please tell me if you liked this, or any corrections you have! I just wrote it and for some reason needed to post it right away, but I’m fixing mistakes as I see them, I swear.
> 
> Also, I did research some things but not an awful lot, so I apologize in advance if I’ve screwed something up really badly..
> 
> Some parts of Bucky in the war are inspired by letters in The Thirteen Letters, which is part of an amazing series by some really serious authors- you probably know it!


End file.
